Walking Hand in Hand with Death, and the Importance of Looking Within
Perhaps if you’re like me, some days you are waking up in denial and other days you are waking up with low-level uneasiness, anxiety, or abject fear. Any of these would be normal now. I’ve been waking up often with thoughts of “another day in captivity…another day in this weird new world.” Mainly I’m aware that anxiety has been haunting my dreams.
So I follow my morning routine for comfort – I go meditate (which quiets the mind and brings me back to joy), and have my lovely green tea and the homemade paleo muffins I make for myself. To be totally honest, I think it’s the promise of the muffins that helps me most to start the day.
All around us are numbers: Numbers of cases, numbers of deaths. Has death ever been such a daily companion for most of us?
We’ve read about pandemics in other years and other lands. We’ve heard of massacres, tsunamis, and other tragedies. We’ve had many deaths of friends and loved ones, including those struck by H.I.V. when that broke open, or so prevalently in recent decades, by cancer. But those deaths seemed far away or few between, compared to the possibility that, on a global scale, a huge number of us may currently meet death via Covid19 sooner than we ever imagined…or that we may get that call about someone we love who has a fever and dry cough or was exposed to the virus. Now, death is on our minds a lot.
Death had entered my life in a prominent way in the autumn of 2019, even before Covid19 hit the U.S.
My father became very ill, in October, with heart failure. I thought we would lose him at least three separate occasions during that time. The family fought along with him, when he was in and out of the hospital almost every other week, through every new procedure and attempt to help his heart, lungs, kidney, and digestion rally. We fought with him when he spent two weeks in the hospital, four weeks in a nursing home, and none of it forestalled death much. I’m very sad to say that on March 27, last week, my precious, irreplaceable, father died. Ultimately, at age 92, his body just gave out. His time on earth abruptly ended and he passed away at home, spared of further suffering, and spared of exposure to Covid19, thank goodness.
I had been acutely grieving the potential loss of my father since October, but when he made his transition, I knew it was time to write about death.
I know that death is not an easy, topic. It’s not what people are generally offering on the internet now. Those uplifting, virtual talks, meditations, and gatherings are extremely important. We all need to find our way to strength, connection, and hope as much as possible. But I’m inviting you to also find more ease with death now. I believe it is crucial to the future existence of humanity.
As we befriend our mortality, there are gifts one can never reap while in denial of death’s immense presence; We feel the incredible blessing of life and the need to cherish each one of our days alive. We start to see the pure miracle of each living being and we feel their hearts in our heart. We connect with the glorious wonder and healing of nature, and we humbly awaken to our place in the Universe. We stop taking life for granted.
If ever there was a time to turn inward, to experience life with much more awareness and gratitude, and to explore our true Self, this is it.
Our true Self is our Immortal Self, which shines brightly within this garment we call the physical body. Our Immortal Self knows death because the Self exists in both death and life. That is what real wholeness is. This life we are experiencing is the manifestation of the Oneness of All That Is, and that All includes death.
Our old ways of living are, in fact, dying or dead. We are suddenly in a daily state of loss — loss of touch and companionship if you live alone, loss of enjoyment and entertainment, like parties, sporting events, movie theaters, and concerts. Children have lost school. We’ve lost whole lifestyles. And as I’ve discovered, there is no satisfying opportunity to have a funeral or memorial service, at a time when we truly need to honor our loved ones who have passed – and we crave the hugs of those who could comfort us, even more than usual.
However, to live fully and to experience our losses with awareness and compassion, we need to walk hand and hand with death.
We have to accept that this is the current “what is” of life. Awakening into the complexity, richness and paradox of life, we have to see that there could be no Yin in life without the Yang. There could be no light without the darkness. There is huge darkness now, but there is also huge Light. To really know both intimately, we have to look within first.
We have to see fear in action in the mind. We have to grieve and to heal our loss and trauma. We have to retrieve those parts of ourselves that got lost in the process of growing older. We have to come back to joy. Otherwise, what we will experience “out there” is a horror show where the monster Fear is the victor.
Let us all choose rebirth instead.
Take the opportunity now to reconnect with your Inner Light for strength, hope, healing and most of all, to flourish in the future that is now being reorganized.
Know that the course of humanity has been changed. The path we were on has been redirected. Where does one find strength and safety amidst all this loss and change? You won’t find it in a pile of toilet paper rolls or numerous bottles of rubbing alcohol, or disinfectant wipes. I’m not saying those aren’t important, because they are. I’m just saying that your strength and safety lies within.
My work is to help you navigate the Deep, Vast Within.
